Joomla sample data: install it on a throwaway site first

Joomla sample data is the ready-made demo content Joomla can pour into an empty site: articles, categories, menus, modules, and a workflow, so you have something to click through instead of a blank front page. Two things about it surprise people in Joomla 5 and 6. It moved, so the installer no longer offers it and it now lives on the Home Dashboard instead. And it is permanent: once you press Install, there is no undo. Joomla says so in the confirmation box itself. That combination is why the safest place to try a profile is a site you can throw away. You can open a free Joomla test site in about 30 seconds, install whichever profile you were curious about, and let the whole thing delete itself afterwards.

Where is the sample data option in Joomla 5 and 6?

On the Home Dashboard, not in the installer. In Joomla 5 and 6 you finish the web installer first, log in to the Administrator, and the landing page carries a Sample Data panel with an Install button for each profile. The official Joomla User Manual describes the panel in exactly those terms (Joomla User Manual, Home Dashboard), while its separate installation walkthrough never mentions sample data at any step (Joomla User Manual, Installing Joomla).

This trips people up because it moved. In Joomla 3 you picked sample data during installation, on the same screen where you set the site name. Joomla 4 dropped it from the installer and rebuilt it as a set of plugins driven by an admin module called mod_sampledata, and Joomla 5 and 6 kept that design. If you are hunting for a checkbox mid install, it has not been there for two major versions. Our walkthrough of how to install Joomla covers what the current installer does and does not ask you.

The path, end to end:

1. Finish the Joomla web installer and log in to the Administrator.
2. Land on the Home Dashboard, which is the first screen after login.
3. Find the Sample Data panel, which is published by default on every new install (Joomla CMS 6.1.0, base.sql).
4. Press Install on the profile you want, then confirm the warning.

The three sample data profiles in Joomla 5 and 6

Joomla ships three, and they are the same on both versions. Joomla 6.1 and Joomla 5.4 each carry the identical set of sample data plugins: Blog, Testing, and Multilingual. Most guides you will find still list Joomla 3’s six options, which is the most common piece of stale advice on this topic.

Joomla’s own descriptions are blunt about each one. The Blog profile “will set up a blog site with articles, tags, custom fields and a workflow,” the Testing profile is “sample data which will help with testing the CMS,” and the Multilingual profile asks that you have at least two languages installed and that no sample data has been installed already (Joomla CMS 6.1.0, plg_sampledata_blog.ini, en-GB.plg_sampledata_testing.ini, and plg_sampledata_multilang.ini). Note that last condition. It matters more than it looks.

Picking a version to try one on? Joomla 5’s regular bugfix support ends on 13 October 2026, and Joomla 6.1 has been the current release since 14 April 2026 (Joomla Developer Network, Roadmap). Our comparison of Joomla 5 vs Joomla 6 goes through the trade-off.

Can you remove Joomla sample data once it is installed?

No, and Joomla tells you before you commit. The confirmation box that appears when you press Install reads: “Proceeding will install a sample data set into your Joomla website. This process can’t be reverted once done.” That exact string ships in both Joomla 6.1 (Joomla CMS 6.1.0, mod_sampledata.ini) and Joomla 5.4 (Joomla CMS 5.4.0, mod_sampledata.ini).

It is not a soft warning. The sample data plugins only know how to insert. The Blog plugin’s class exposes its event subscriptions and four apply steps, and nothing else: there is no remove, revert, or uninstall method anywhere in it (Joomla CMS 6.1.0, Blog.php). Getting rid of the content afterwards means one of two things:

1. Deleting every article, category, tag, custom field, workflow, menu, and module by hand, then emptying the trash. Slow, and easy to miss something.
2. Restoring a database backup you took before you clicked. Which assumes you took one.

A second wrinkle is worth knowing. That Sample Data panel is published by default on the Home Dashboard of every new install, so it sits on the first screen you see after login. The Joomla User Manual notes the panel “is not needed in an established production site and can be safely unpublished” (Joomla User Manual, Home Dashboard). Good advice, and worth doing on a real site: you unpublish it like any other admin module, from System, then Administrator Modules. Until you do, a live Joomla sits one stray click from permanent demo articles.

One click of the Blog profile creates a whole site

The Blog profile creates more than most people expect, which is what makes the no-undo rule bite. It runs in four steps and, from a single button press, fills a clean install with a working site. Its language file spells the whole inventory out (Joomla CMS 6.1.0, plg_sampledata_blog.ini):

• 11 articles and 4 categories (Blog, Help, Joomla, Typography).
• 3 menus holding 17 menu items, plus 12 modules placed around the template.
• 4 tags, and a custom field called “About the Author” in a field group.
• A 9-stage editorial workflow (Idea, Copywriting, Graphic Design, Fact Check, Content Review, Published, and three more) wired together with 12 transitions.

That is a lot of objects spread across a lot of managers, all created at once and none of them removable in one action. On a scratch site it is exactly what you want. On a site you care about, it is an afternoon of cleanup. Every JInstant site starts as a clean Joomla install with nothing installed from that panel, which is the blank state these profiles assume, and the reason a throwaway site shows you what a profile really does to an empty Joomla.

Can you install more than one sample data profile?

Not usefully on one site. Joomla blocks you from running a profile that is already there, with the message “This sample data set is already installed” (Joomla CMS 6.1.0, mod_sampledata.ini). Nothing stops you firing a different profile at the same site, but since the first one cannot be removed, the second simply piles on top of it.

The Multilingual profile makes the consequence explicit: it asks that no sample data has been installed before you start. So if you install Blog, look around, and then decide you want to see Multilingual instead, you have not got a clean route back. You need a fresh Joomla. That is the practical reason a disposable site beats a permanent one here. Comparing all three profiles means three clean installs, and the quickest way to get a clean install over and over is an online Joomla sandbox rather than a local stack you rebuild by hand.

How do you try sample data without wrecking anything?

Put it on a site that is meant to be thrown away. A disposable test site gives you a real Joomla Administrator with Super User rights, so the Sample Data panel behaves exactly as it would anywhere else, and the irreversibility stops mattering because the whole site expires on a timer. The flow:

1. Open a test site and pick your version, either Joomla 6.1 or Joomla 5.4, with a PHP version it supports. It only needs an email, so there is no long signup.
2. Follow the magic link into the Joomla Administrator, which lands you on the Home Dashboard.
3. Find the Sample Data panel and press Install on Blog, Testing, or Multilingual.
4. Click through the front end and the back end, and see what the profile actually gave you.
5. Want a different profile? Open a second fresh site and install that one instead, rather than stacking it on the first.
6. Walk away. The site deletes itself after four hours, so there is nothing to clean up.

Any risky one-way change suits a throwaway install for the same reason, whether that is testing an extension from the roughly 4,800 add-ons listed in the official Joomla Extensions Directory as of July 2026, or rehearsing an upgrade. It also makes a good way to practice Joomla online, since the Testing profile hands you banners, contacts, and 72 articles to poke at without inventing content yourself.

Why does so much sample data advice still describe the installer?

Because most of the Joomla world is still on the version where that was true. As of July 2026, W3Techs reports that 54.1% of Joomla sites still run Joomla 3 (W3Techs, Usage statistics of Joomla), the version where sample data was an installer choice and where profiles like Brochure, Learn Joomla, and Default English (GB) existed. Those names went away in Joomla 4, but the tutorials describing them never did.

So if a guide tells you to pick sample data during setup, or to import a sample_blog.sql file through phpMyAdmin, it is describing Joomla 3. Those SQL files do not exist in Joomla 5 or 6, which use the plugin system instead. Joomla still runs about 1.2% of all websites (W3Techs, 2026), and a big slice of that installed base has muscle memory for a flow that two major versions have since replaced. Checking a claim against a current install takes a minute on a throwaway site, and that is the quickest way to tell live documentation from a 2018 blog post.

Conclusion

Joomla sample data in 5 and 6 comes down to three facts. It installs from the Sample Data panel on the Home Dashboard, not from the installer. There are three profiles, Blog, Testing, and Multilingual, not the six that Joomla 3 offered. And it cannot be reverted, so whatever you install is what that site has from now on.

None of that is a problem on a site you are going to discard anyway, which is the whole argument for trying it somewhere disposable. Spin up a throwaway Joomla test site, press Install, see what the profile does, and let it auto-delete in four hours. If you like what you saw, you then know exactly what you are committing to on the site that matters. For the fuller picture on what a scratch install is good for, our comparison of a Joomla demo vs your own test site is the next thing to read.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Joomla User Manual, Home Dashboard (the Sample Data panel) (retrieved July 17, 2026).
• Joomla User Manual, Installing Joomla (retrieved July 17, 2026).
• Joomla CMS 6.1.0, mod_sampledata.ini (“This process can’t be reverted once done.”) (retrieved July 17, 2026).
• Joomla CMS 5.4.0, mod_sampledata.ini (same warning on Joomla 5) (retrieved July 17, 2026).
• Joomla CMS 6.1.0, plugins/sampledata/blog/src/Extension/Blog.php (no removal method) (retrieved July 17, 2026).
• Joomla CMS 6.1.0, plg_sampledata_blog.ini (Blog profile contents) (retrieved July 17, 2026).
• Joomla CMS 6.1.0, en-GB.plg_sampledata_testing.ini (Testing profile: 72 articles, 9 steps) (retrieved July 17, 2026).
• Joomla CMS 6.1.0, plg_sampledata_multilang.ini (Multilingual prerequisites) (retrieved July 17, 2026).
• Joomla CMS 6.1.0, installation/sql/mysql/base.sql (mod_sampledata published to cpanel by default) (retrieved July 17, 2026).
• Joomla.org, Joomla 6.1 is here! (14 April 2026).
• Joomla Developer Network, Roadmap (Joomla 5 bugfix support ends 13 October 2026) (retrieved July 17, 2026).
• W3Techs, Usage statistics and market share of Joomla (retrieved July 17, 2026).
• Joomla Extensions Directory, extension count (retrieved July 17, 2026).